1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to processing of documents, and more specifically relates to using labels in a document processing system based on hand-written marks on the labels.
2. Background Art
Computer systems have vastly improved the efficiency of many modern workers by providing ways to quickly and efficiently generate and handle electronic documents. Many software tools have been developed that generate and/or process electronic documents in various ways, including word processors, spreadsheets, databases, scanning software, web page development systems, content management systems, hypertext markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML), etc. It has long been the goal of many people in the information processing field to realize a “paperless office”, which means an office where physical paper documents are completely replaced with electronic documents. However, the dream of achieving a paperless office has not been achieved in most business contexts.
Advances have been made in processing paper using barcode labels that are affixed to documents. When a document that includes a barcode label is scanned, the presence of the label can be detected, and some function can be performed by the system based on the information in the label, such as electronically filing the document in a document management system. An example of a known barcode label is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,427,032. Known barcode labels allow system functions to be performed according to information printed on the label. However, the known systems for processing barcode labels do not allow much flexibility in system or user function.